John Muir Wilderness, Calif. — The locals call it Mount Thoreau.

A vast pyramid of talus and scree in the Sierra Nevada range, it sits between the aptly named Wonder Lakes Basin and Mount Emerson, a namesake of the great 19th-century author Ralph Waldo Emerson. It might seem only fitting that it should bear the name of Emerson’s close friend and fellow transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau.

But the mountain cannot be named for Thoreau or anyone else. Since 1964, the government has decreed that except in extraordinary circumstances, unnamed features in federal wilderness areas will remain that way.

Now a group of 11 writers, printmakers, poets, wilderness enthusiasts, Thoreau devotees and fellow travelers is trying to correct what they say is a historic oversight. On Sept. 26, they made the trek to the summit of the unnamed mountain for a minor act of civil disobedience: a ceremony to name it for Thoreau.

While a number of authors have mountains named in their honor, Thoreau has none. Given his love of wilderness and wild peaks, that seems like a surprising slight, say members of the group, which includes Gary Snyder, the Zen Buddhist poet, and Kim Stanley Robinson, the science fiction author.